open letter to alt.atheism.moderated readers
Di...@alt.atheism.moderated
or fax, telex and email addresses. Every word of every message is
automatically searched: they do not need your specific telephone number or
Internet address on the list.
All the different computers in the network are known, within the UKUSA
agencies, as the ECHELON Dictionaries.
Computers that can search for keywords have existed since at least the 1970s,
but the ECHELON system has been designed to interconnect all these computers
and allow the stations to function as components of an integrated whole.
Under the ECHELON system, a particular station's Dictionary computers contain
not only its parent agency's chosen keywords, but also a list for each of the
other four agencies. For example, each New Zealand site has separate search
lists for the NSA, GCHQ [British], DSD [Australia], and CSE [Canada] in
addition to its own.
So each station collects all the telephone calls, faxes, telexes, Internet
messages and other electronic communications that its computers have been
pre-programmed to select for all the allies and automatically send this
intelligence to them.
This means that New Zealand stations are being used by the overseas agencies
for their automatic collecting - while New Zealand does not even know what
is being intercepted from the New Zealand sites for the allies. In return,
New Zealand gets tightly controlled access to a few parts of the system.
The GCSB computers, the stations, the headquarter operations and, indeed,
GCSB itself function almost entirely as components of this integrated system.
Each station in the network - not just the satellite stations - has Dictionary
computers that report to the ECHELON system
P37
United States spy satellites, designed to intercept communicat
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Bla...@alt.atheism.moderated
"
The transmissions included the managers' social security numbers too.
For non-U.S. people: a defacto key for accessing all of ones personal records.
And why did I create and turn on email monitoring at that site?
Well, those business magazines for the computer industry like to sell big
screaming "Internet Security: the Sky is Falling!!!" covers now and then.
So, one triggered the Chairman to start making strange noises about shutting
down the Internet connection for security reasons. Also said something about
having email printed out at the Internet system and hand-delivered.
Now THAT scared the hell out of the rest of us, from geeks to managers, so,
being the hired gun for doing Internet security, I created some capture code.
All email in and out of the firm was now being copied to a 'save' directory.
Each night I went over it - all email traffic - with the aid of my analytics:
keyword spotting and keyword excluding software.
I had never heard of ECHELON or DICTIONARY or anything like it.
It was just obvious what to do from trying to check all (each and every one)
email personally at first. There was way too much
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S...@alt.atheism.moderated
Brothers,
and Bob Brain's WWW business site over the Internet!
: date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 11:30:29 -0400
: From: bob@tridenthead2 (Bob Brain nnn-nnnn)
: Subject: XXX Graphic Files
: To: Br...@rnb.com
:
: Bruno> I can't believe it: I made illicit entry into Barbara Garden's
: Bruno> office (short skirts-high-heels-stockings) and grabbed a floppy
: Bruno> with some graphic images we can use.
: Bruno> Please install these into our WWW site.
:
: Made so.
:
: -Bob
********** end excerpt from 'Corruption at Salomon Brothers' **********
Here's one example of internal operations documentation being sucked out
the Internet. And endless amount of this material left the firm.
I caught Internal Audit alone transferring proprietary/confidential
material three times.
********** begin excerpt from 'Corruption at Salomon Brothers' **********
*****************************************************************************
*****************************************************************************
*****************************************************************************
SECURITY INCIDENT REPORT, 8/25/96
--INTERNAL AUDIT: Fred Hamburger--
HOSTNAMES / USERNAMES / PASSWORDS
SALOMON INTERNAL DOCUMENTATION
---------------------------------
This is a security incident report regarding the Internet (a public wire)
traffic of Salomon Brothers, which is monitored for security/compliance.
Internal Audit member Fred Hamburger has repeatedly transferred passwords
to Salomon systems over the unprotected Internet, one system is a Yield
Book system, and also transferred a highly detailed internal document
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End...@alt.atheism.moderated
from 'Corruption at Salomon Brothers' **********
Notice my 'Boy, email is one cheap detective!' observation; Legal had talked
about hiring a private investigator prior to that.
The "perp" not only named his new job, he gave his full job description,
pay rates, and his personal thoughts on matters.
The case was accepted by NYC Assistant US Prosecutor Jeremy Temkin - the
person assigned the Citibank wire-transfer theft. He said they never figured
out who the inside person was.
The interesting thing was that it turns out the people who investigate for the
US attorneys are FBI agents. Every meeting we had included a couple FBI agents
taking notes and turns questioning.
The nice FBI personnel I dealt with were from the New York Computer Crime
Squad. Special Agents Steven N. Garfinkel and David P. Marziliano.
This posting isn't about the many good FBI and other law enforcement people.
Sorry.
The other FBI case involved transfer of Salomon technology to the ISP account
of an employee who had accepted another job, but hadn't yet notified Salomon.
They mailed home to themselves Salomon's Risk Management financial code.
The Salomon Managing Director in charge was not amused.
The ex-Salomon person had transferred it to their home ISP account, and
started working for Jefferies Securities.
I found this transfer to Jefferies Securities in the backups too:
********** begin excerpt from 'Corruption at Salomon Brothers' **********
Dumb-and-Dumber incident:
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Sender: Fred_...@jefco.com
date: 28 Feb 96 8:14:56 EDT
subject: Greetings!
Recipient: Dr...@xxx.sbi.com
Drake.
Favor time! I need do
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Sim...@alt.atheism.moderated
killer! What a total hypocrisy!
My dad has been to Europe once: "I didn't have time to sight-see when
we hit the beaches though". He enlisted at 17, and was captured during
the Battle of the Bulge, which involved General Patton.
My dad said that when he saw fellow GIs in the German prison camp trading food
for tobacco and even adding wood shavings to extend it: that's when he decided
not to smoke.
"Tobacco isn't addictive" ---Politician Bob Dole, taker of tobacco monies
I've always wondered which Senators were paid off to exempt billboards from
having their health warnings be the same proportion as those in magazine ads.
And how did they justify it?
Here is an example of our law enforcement's attitudes toward marijuana:
* "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
*
* FBI Director William S. Sessions, questioned by the Senate Judiciary
* Committee in March 1986, acknowledged that he once told one of his
* assistants that he thought several Ku Klux Klan members accused of
* lynching a black man "were OK until I learned
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Virg...@alt.atheism.moderated
would have required it for all users of a
* National Job Training and Employment database.
*
* George Orwell, in 1984, his classic novel of Big Brother and a coming
* totalitarian state, observed that very few people are awake and alert
* to the machinations and manipulations of the controllers. Thus, the
* people, as a whole, fall victim to a colossal conspiracy out of ignorance
* and because of apathy and denial of reality:
*
* The people could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of
* reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was
* demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public
* events to notice what was happening.
[
By Walter Cronkite: "Orwell's '1984'---Nearing?", NYT, June 5 1983
In our world, where a Vietnam village can be destroyed so it can be
saved; where the President names the latest thing in nuclear missiles
"Peacekeeper"---in such a world, can the Orwellian vision be very far
away?
Big Brother's ears have plugs in them right now (or they are, by law,
supposed to), at least on the domestic telephone and cable traffic.
But the National Security Agency's ability to monitor microwave
transmissions, to scoop out of the air VAST numbers of communications,
including telephone conver
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